Ebisawa (60) Imports uranium from Myanmar and supports Iran for the purchase of weapons
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration deploys secret agents to arrest people after dealing in nuclear materials.
The head of a Japan-based criminal organization pleaded guilty in a New York court on the 8th (local time) to charges of participating in the smuggling of uranium for nuclear weapons from Myanmar to Iran.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, entered a plea bargain after admitting to crimes punishable by up to 10 years in prison while on trial in Manhattan federal court on charges of smuggling weapons and drugs.
Sentencing will be held in court on April 9.
U.S. prosecutors announced that in 2021 and 2022, Ebisawa met and communicated with a friend of an agent posing as an Iranian general, not knowing that he was a secret agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The New York Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confirmed that it arrested Ebisawa during a drug raid in April 2022.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a press release that the arrests and indictments demonstrate the DEA’s ability to crack down on the world’s most dangerous drug organizations.
He said the investigation revealed the extent to which transnational organized crime groups were trafficking nuclear materials and drugs with dangerous international terrorist groups.
He said Ebisawa admitted to “brazenly smuggling nuclear materials, including weapons-grade plutonium, from Burma and delivering them to the Middle East.”
Prosecutors said the Japanese organization had focused on exporting huge quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States and, in return, supplying powerful weaponry, such as surface-to-air missiles, to Burma.
Ebisawa told U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in 2020 that he had “obtained a huge amount of nuclear material and wanted to sell it.” To confirm his claim, he presented specifications and photos of nuclear materials, including Geiger coefficients, and claimed that these materials included thorium, uranium, and plutonium, according to court records.
The source of the nuclear material is a leader in Myanmar’s ethnic civil war. He is known to have mined uranium in Korea, exported it through Ebisawa, and used the funds to purchase weapons.
[뉴욕= AP/뉴시스]
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